Dive Brief:

• Google Cloud introduced new analytics offerings for inventory management this month to help users better meet customer demand, identify trends and adapt to the specific needs of their business, the company announced in an April 4 blog post.
• The latest Cloud Cortex Framework release includes new data marts, views and templates of Looker dashboards to display operational analytics and metrics used for inventory management.
• Supply chain executives, including chief supply chain officers and operations managers, can use performance indicators such as turnover time to track how long stocked inventory can meet demand and what percentage of inventory is obsolete.

Dive Insight:

Google Cloud’s updated features aim to help customers keep better track of inventory and ensure that volumes properly align with demand.

“By keeping track of inventory levels, businesses can ensure that they have the right amount of products on hand to meet customer demand, while also avoiding overstocking or understocking,” per the blog post.

Meanwhile, the sample dashboards offer visibility for common key performance indicators. Insights include spotting trends and benchmarking KPIs against past inventory, slow moving or aging inventory.

Google Cloud Cortex Framework, initially released in 2021, uses open-data integration to provide business and planning insights, among other features. The updated inventory insights can be combined with Google Cloud’s new and existing related content, like vendor performance, to provide a broader picture of a company’s supply chain health.

With data often siloed across different departments or systems, companies have been looking for easier ways to get a better sense of performance across their supply chain.

In March, Microsoft introduced new artificial intelligence capabilities to its supply chain management platform to help shippers flag and respond to possible risks. Meanwhile, software company Oracle, which adds new capabilities to its Supply Chain Management platform every quarter, recently updated its Transportation Management and Global Trade Management solutions.

Amazon Web Services is also looking to increase supply chain visibility and planning by pooling data across systems into a centralized “data lake.”